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There is a person here whose username is Synesthesia...and I was wondering, does your name connect to the brain disorder? The reason I ask is becasue I'm trying to do a science project on synesthesia, and I find it very interesting. Do you have synesthesia yourself? I don't know much about it yet, but basically what it is, is a brain disorder where your senses are mixed up. For example you could see music or taste words. Also, letters or numbers are certain colors, so maybe every time you see the letter A it's red. For example. Most people have one or two symptoms of synesthesia but I think the full blown disorder is fairly rare. (Like my bio teacher hasn't even heard of it). I've always assosiated colors with the days of the week, but this is as close to synesthesia as I can get. I think it would be very cool to actually have it. (Monday is blue (obviously), Friday is brown, Tuesday is red...I'm not sure about the rest). So tell me, Synesthesia, is that why its your username??
Posts: 464 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I don't know if she's around right now, but Synestasia has said before that she does have synestesia.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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It's not as exactly a disorder, more like a lovely sort of variation. I can see colours in music, taste it, feel it and smell it and I do other weird things.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Apparently, many of the musical genuises in Western culture (Mozart, Beethoven, etc.) had synesthesia.
Actually, a lot of people with perfect pitch report a kind of synethesia with the music: they see different notes as different colors. *envy*
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I think synesthesia as an experience is more common than is often thought. I know, for example, that I physically experience words and often associate them -- on a level I'm not consciously able to express -- with mental colors, based on their location and usage. This doesn't happen to me with music at all, but a page of prose or poetry can "fill" my head with color. But perhaps color isn't quite the right word for what I see; it's more the sense of a color, the essence of a color. I can look at a word, for example, and say "oh, that word is orange." And that word will always be essentially orange, and I will always kind of feel the same things I feel when I see other things that are orange.
This was actually why I was a good copy editor, because I perceive typos on a semi-physical level. They don't come across as a color so much as a sort of wrongness, a kind of "un-color" that, if I were really pressed to give it a color, I'd call a livid grey. If such a thing could exist.
And having discussed this with a few people, I find it doesn't appear to be that rare. I wonder if most people who've dabbled in the arts have exercised subconscious connections between their most-used methods of perception.
That said, TRUE synesthesia -- an actual melding of the senses -- DOES appear to be fairly rare, and at its most severe is supposed to be almost crippling (and certainly nothing to envy).
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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In poetry, synesthesia refers to describing one sensory experience with one totally unrelated to it, such as "the taste of the lightning"
Side note: If you perceive a taste in distant lightning, Epictetus would be very interested to know what you've been smoking and would ask that you send a bundle discretely to his address. Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I mostly have trouble with pink and orange together I makes me feel so weird... People have scents, songs all have smells and tastes, some concepts have a smell and taste too.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I've always associated colors with numbers, letters, days of the week, etc. That might have been because when teaching such things in early schooling, bright colors are used. I dunno.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Coolness. I just can't do letter synesthesia, and I hate numbers. But I can taste words. So that's cool.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Tom, I understand what you are saying. I think that associating one thing with something totally unrelated is very common. Many musicians I know can say that one chord feels warm, another cold, for example (just an example, everyone would have a different feeling). It's not a physical actual heat or cold, but an association that is almost a feeling.
I do not, at least in a way I could possibly consider explaining or conjure up without actually experiencing. The only thing I know is that music does not do that kind of thing for me!
However I do not think that you could fairly call such an experience synesthesia...
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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this is very intersting! i have never heard of this. Syn, what are some of the tastes that come with certain words?
Posts: 65 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: It's not as exactly a disorder, more like a lovely sort of variation. I can see colours in music, taste it, feel it and smell it and I do other weird things.
Some completely unrelated to synesthesia. Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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It's always best to confront the truth head on. For your sake though, I'll start working on a way to transmit Aqua di Gio and Old Spice via http.
Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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It depends on the song, they all taste different and the textures are all different. Except when you get bands that just put out the same song.
Some words are sort of salty. Like spikey or something. Words with that sound tend to be a bit salty. I got to find an explicit way to explain this...
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I saw soomething about synesthesia on TV once, and there was a guy who had to break up with his girlfriend because her name tasted so bad.
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I discovered one little neurological oddity about myself last year, when I briefly tried going swimming in the mornings before work. The chlorine in the gym's pool was so strong that I still smelled a little like it even after a shower, and on the days that I went around smelling like chlorine, I would have phantom sunburn pain on my neck and shoulders. I guess it's just an association from years of swimming in outdoor pools as a kid and never remembering sunscreen.
Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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